Neo-Proudhonian Mutualism.—Between Contr'archy and Guarantism.—The Multiplication of Free Forces is the True Contr'un.

Saturday, September 01, 2012

Arthur Ranc, Anarchy (1869)

I've seen a number of references to an 1869 encyclopedia entry on "Anarchie," which earned adjectives like "curious" in at least one source. I happened to run across it this morning, while doing some other research—and it certainly has its curious moments. It's pretty fiery for an encyclopedia entry. Enjoy!

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ANARCHY.
— D'Alembert, after having defined anarchy as “a disorder in the State, which
consists of no one having enough authority to commander and make the laws
respected, as a consequence of which the people behave as they wish, without
subordination and without police,” concludes thus: “We can be sure that all government
in general tends to despotism or to anarchy.”

That
thought which seems at first glance to place political society between two
equally depressing alternatives, is at bottom, if we look closely, only a
careless conception of the theory formulated in this way by Proudhon: “the
first term of the governmental series being Absolutism,
the final, fatal, term is Anarchy.”

The
obvious error of d'Alembert comes from thinking of Authority as a principle of
order, while in modern societies, order can only follow from the successive,
reasoned elimination of Authority. “Anarchy, or the absence of a master, of a sovereign,” said Proudhon, such is the form
of government to which we are approaching every day, and that a deep-rooted
habit of mind leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression
of chaos.”

Proudhon
expressed himself thus in his First
Memoir on Property. Later, pursuing his thought and formulating it with his
accustomed rigor, he declared that the aim of the Revolution was the very
suppression of Authority, that is to say of government.

Anarchyis therefore understoodintwo senses, not only different, butabsolutely contradictory.For some,it is the absenceof governmentauthority,principle, rule, and consequently it is
disorder in minds and acts. For others, it is the elimination of authority in
its political, social and religious aspects, the dissolution of government in the natural organism; it is
contract in the place of sovereignty, arbitration in the place of the judiciary
power; it is labor not organized by an outside force, but organizing itself; it
is religious worship disappearing as a social function and becoming adequate to
the individual manifestations of free conscience; it is the citizens
contracting freely, not with the government, but with each other; in the end,
it is liberty and order.

Proudhon
also said: “Liberty adequate and identical to order, that is all that is real
in power and politics.”—The problem is not to know how we will be governed best,
but how we will be most free.

We can
now recognize that the theory d'Alembert is perfectly just. Yes, all government
must necessarily lead to despotism or anarchy, understood in its vulgar sense
or according to its philosophical meaning.

Between
absolutism and liberty this is no conciliation possible, no middle term: such
is the conclusion to which we are inevitably led, by theory and practice, philosophy
and history. Disorder is the work of the rulers; the trouble in society, the turmoil
in the State come from the unjust resistance of power, in both its spiritual
and temporal forms, aided and sustained by the privileged, to the legitimate
demands of the citizens, free-thinkers, and proletarians.

For the idle and the exploiters, for
the privileged and the hedonists, any idea of justice is an idea of disorder,
any action against privilege is a anarchic event. To think only of escaping
exploitation is a guilty thought. The idle and privileged want to enjoy in peace.
The best government is the one which insures the most security for their
enjoyments. Speculators, gilded youth, dandies, friends of order, deal-makers:
that is the accursed race, which, for almost forty-eight years, has given
itself to despotism, a race of prostitutes in need of pimps. The ideal Paris,
for them, is a city of pleasures, an immense Corinth, with some very expensive
girls, since they have lots of money, and well-behaved police. They are the
ones who, after 9 Thermidor, whipped the women and crushed the patriots—ten
against one—on the public square. They are the ones who, in June, after the
battle, shot down the vanquished in the uprooted streets. These are the true
anarchists, if anarchists means makers of disorder. It is they who, to satisfy in
peace their base passions, to wallow at their ease in the orgy of the sated,
terrifying the interests, setting the bourgeois aflame with fear, organize the
panic and finally, dragging the unthinking masses along with them, prostrate
themselves before absolute power.

Now, despotism
is itself powerless to insure the security of the interests. What did you see
during the first Empire? A few months of prosperity, for which we paid dearly, then
silent tyranny, crafty despotism, the police absolute masters of the life and
liberty of the citizen, the holdovers of the revolutionary idea pursued by an
implacable hatred, the old order reestablished, France handed over to the
clergy, the aristocracy reconstituted, patriotic customs destroyed in the army,
the republican cohorts sent to Saint-Domingue to die, the lettres
de cachet reestablished, the State prisons filled, three million men
transformed into fodder for the cannons, commerce destroyed, agriculture ruined,
the countryside giving up its last man, and, at the end of all that, the
crowning of the edifice, the invasion!

Yes, if
we mean by anarchy disorder pushed to
its highest pitch, despotism and anarchy are two identical terms, for despotism
makes up the greater part of human nature, stopping social development, sacrificing
everything to the material order, creates antagonism among the interests and
keeps society in a state of latent war.

Isn’t
there disorder and anarchy, for example, in a country where the civil servants
are placed outside the law and cannot be brought to trial, where the principle of
equality before the law is neglected, where the judiciary and executive power
are confused? Isn’t there anarchy when the legislative power, reduced to the
state of a consulting body, does not have the ability to introduce laws and can
only amend those that are drawn up by a council whose members are nominated by
the executive? When the Constitution can only be modified with the consent of
the executive, who alone has the right to appeal to the nation, while the
nation has no legal and constitutional means of making its will known spontaneously
and without being asked by the executive? When the principle of responsibility
of the executive has no sanction, and no procedure exists by which an action for
damages can be constitutionally introduced?

Isn’t
there anarchy, trouble and disorder when the electoral body organized so that
the urban groups are divided into sections, each of which is joined with a larger
group of voters from the country, when by this system their votes are canceled
out, and the cities and the country are place in a state of violent antagonism?

Thus,
absolutism is the synonym of disorder, and also the synonym of anarchy, understood
in the common sense of the word. Just the same, liberty and order are two
correlative terms which are resolved in a third, more general term, anarchy, as
Proudhon has defined it, in the radical elimination of the principle of
authority in all its forms.